Deform function

Insert - Features - Deform

Mr. Pickles

Thanks :-)

From what I've read from others who should know, the Deform function isn't worth fooling with. It's apparently just that bad, and like PhotoWorks2 never should have been released. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Mark 'Sporky' Staplet>

Prepare to be disappointed. It (most likely) does not work the way that you want it to work. I would be very interested to hear a success story from anybody that has used the deform feature and got exactly what they needed. I've asked around and have not heard any success stories, except maybe making some props for renderings that will never bear the scrutiny of manufacture. This is nit meant to be a slam - I'm just curious what application it actually has.

Like everything else, it has potential. (add subscription $ here)

Getting good results from Deform is painful, imho. It becomes a whole other task in how you setup up your curves (edge, intersection and face curves or points) and hold curves as well as the different shape options (tweaks).

This is SW Corps (marketing) attempt at GSM (Globe Shape Modeling) but it does not address the real what/need,.. to directly interact with the surface topology (with history). It needs to be more fluid.

I freak out on this new stuff because looking at the past and current issues with SW surface inconsistencies... the chances are my models, which use deform, will fail in a later sp or release. (beta testing

..

Sporkman wrote:

It is not a NURB type of functionality. It is trying to be an ID tool. Depending on what you are trying to achieve you can get a much better deform function using suface fill or do a loft and add a section post-loft. If you edit the loft section when you first create it, you get a close proxmity of real time surface deformation. Hopes this helps

Art

It is not what I expected, I wanted to see freeform dragging of multipe nurbs nodepoints, this is very primitive.

You must mistaken it for ShapeWorks. It places nurb surfaces in SolidWorks. Take a look at

SW is definitely not on the right track with free-form modeling. They can't be serious about organic modeling until they fix fundamental issues with curvature continuity control, especially w.r.t. splines.

I don't think SW wants to expose its users to the "innards" of surface modeling. They want neatly packaged, (relatively) easy to use features so as not to confuse underschooled users. They have not been successful at making these features useful.

It sure is!

Here is something I put together to get the ball rolling after reading your post. Maybe somone can run with these?

I haven't used it or seen it used on real product data yet. I've fooled with it and made some examples, but I'm having difficulty seeing a practical application. In fact, I'm having some difficulty imagining where I would want to use the concept, assuming that the tool would do what you imagined it should do.

It seems another step down the dome-shape-deform path that gets decreasingly useful and increasingly complex. I do use dome and shape every time I make a pimple-shaped feature. I know some users who affectionately refer to the "shape" tool as the "tit wizard". Makes more sense if you look at the toolbar icon, I guess, and the shapes that you inevitably wind up with when just messing with it.

The dome-shape-deform philosophy seems to take for granted that SW users can't make complex shapes and need to have some interface to get in your way just to prove it. That's one of the things I really like about ShapeWorks - it really doesn't have much of an interface, and it allows you to directly maniplulate the surfaces, although it's not very parametric or associative.

The deform tool also seems to assume that you don't model what you need, you model something else and then hope this random shape generator will make it look like you can model complex shapes. That's a little unfair, I guess. I just wanted to use the phrase "random shape generator" in a sentence. I have no idea why that term comes to mind when talking about the deform tool...

It does allow you to take an edge and deform it to another edge or curve. It won't go to a projected curve, but I found that if the projected curve is converted into a 3D sketch, it will use that for the target curve. I was able to get somewhat controlled shapes out of the curve to curve deform, and only pimple-breast-phallus type shapes out of the point deform.

It's at least conceivable that you could do something useful with it. Maybe we should sponsor a contest for the first person to get a design into production using the deform feature. I'd be interested to see some practical applications other than sales demos where think3 is the competitor.

Hmm. Could we trade in the deform, mold tools and 2D emulator for a ruled surface that really works?

matt

"Edward T Eaton" wrote in news:bvmupr$tt0de$ snipped-for-privacy@ID-139356.news.uni-berlin.de:

I haven't actually tried this yet, but I was thinking that it might be useful for modeling parts that are deformed in their assembled position, like snaps and sheet metal springs.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems

There you go! I think those are excellent suggestions. Basically, anything that flexes in real life can probably benefit from that feature.

Hmmm, maybe I could use it to animate a mud-flap with one of those chrome chicks on em, flapping around... or maybe not.

Mike

Flapping around? You mean like Janis was flapping around onstage at the SuperBowl halftime?

Oh man that's funny! You've found yet another application.

Oh, but I just remembered it was the "Shape" tool that somebody called the "tit Wizard" . . .

Another example would be o-rings.

In mold design we often use o-rings as static seals between mold plates. In assembly they are `squeezed'. It amuses me no end that some of the folks supplying libraries for mold design offer o-rings for our use, but with no allowance for showing them in the `used state'.

I haven't tried this yet, but perhaps a configuration of the o-rings in the compressed state could be accomplished with the deform tool.

jk

Now I see. This new feature is for the men out there suffering from 'model erectile dysfunction'.

Naturally, the next evolutionary step would be for SolidWorks to 'enhance performance'...